High life
Par for the course
Taki
The mother of my children rang me from the Big Bagel in order to tell me not to worry, the family had survived the blast in the tower. 'If anything,' she said, 'the bomb put a damper on social goings on, everyone staying indoors watching televi- sion and hoping Hillary catches the bombers.'
I am not surprised. Long ago I came to the conclusion that our American cousins — especially those in El Lay and the Bagel — are as yellow as the wife of Salman Rushdie revealed the great author to be, and without even a Fatwa against their mis- erable lives. (Remember those Hollywood films, when the Yanks fought the Japanese hordes and won? Well, they won all right, but the odds were as uneven as tanks are against Samurai swords.)
The mendacious Big Bagel Times wrote that America itself is not safe, using words such as chilling and horror. What bull—t. Here are Londoners living normal lives with the everyday threat of a supermarket being blasted to smithereens, or a little trip to Harrods turning into a massacre, and its the Bagelites who are crying uncle. During the war we Athenians got sprayed from the air daily, the Brits doing the bombing while it was light, the Americans while dark, yet everyone went about their business. I shud- der to think what would have happened if the Stukas had got through and hit New York. The Bagel would have surrendered within 24 hours.
It is, of course, par for the course. With the touchy-feely, little fatty, bonding with his cabinet draft-dodger at the helm, how are the people supposed to react to a bomb blast. Here's a man who has never saluted, but is telling us to sacrifice, a flim-flam man of the worse order, one who has pro- posed the biggest tax increase in history, yet he contends he is slashing the deficit by cutting spending in some categories and advocating new spending in others. It is the greatest single seizure of wealth and income in American history. The moolah is being confiscated from those who earned it, and turned over to politicians and bureaucrats to spend it. The only thing I can say is I wish the Trade Centre bomb had gone off under Hillary's bed. While she and the war hero were in it.
And while I'm at it, that TV programme on J. Edgar Hoover stank to high heaven. The integrity and veracity of those who spoke against the great man were on a par with Clinton's, and as far as the homosexu- al charges, wasn't it strange that with all the skilled, Pulitzer-Prize-driven investiga- tive news reporters abounding in the great land of First Amendment rights, no one has ever come up with any concrete evi- dence that J. Edgar was a bum bandit. Worse, the money-grubbers who made that trash did not even bother to check that until 1961, there was no federal law autho- rising the FBI to investigate organised crime or groups such as the Mafia. After 1961, the Mafia went on the run, and all because of the FBI.
But enough of draft-dogers, liars and dis- honest hacks. Last week was a great one right here in London town. First at the opera, where I got carried away and sang along with Ruggero Raimondi's Don Basilio in the Barber of Seville, only to be told in no uncertain terms to shut up. (I now carry a silver flask everywhere, and can drink throughout performances, the downside being getting carried away at times.) Then it was the usual, Christopher's, Annabel's, Tramp, and so on. Until the weekend, that is.
At Badminton — not in the big house, but in the cottage, the one slightly smaller than the White House, but not much — Tracy Worcester, with whom I battle regu- larly over environmental issues, won easily this time. As did Geraldine Harmsworth and Natasha Grenfell, who got together and abused me throughout for being a male chauvinist, which I proudly am. The Worcester children drove me nuts, the music was ghastly (Zulu and Rock and Roll), yet I cannot remember a weekend where I laughed as much or felt happier. I guess it's because my host, Harry Worces- ter, does not have a single of the qualities that got the draft-dodger into the White House, and I mean, not a single one.
Previous page
